Turkish Airlines EuroLeague offenses have a complicated relationship with on- and off-ball efficiency even though the competition's prowess at the latter is unmatched in elite world basketball.
High-Gravity Matchups:
After just one round, there are few takeaways from looking at the standings, but the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague schedule is often unforgiving to teams that do not exploit every opportunity. While eight of nine host teams capitalized on home-court advantage in Round 1 – most in convincing fashion – opening week featured several marquee matchups, as well. 2021 Final Four teams AX Armani Exchange Milan and CSKA Moscow played to nearly the same result as they did in last spring's Third Place Game while Real Madrid scored a 13-point win over reigning champion Anadolu Efes Istanbul.
Neither game likely moves the needle for these clubs, but the 2020-21 season saw the line for postseason qualification drawn distinctly at 20 wins. That daunting total is the equivalent of going undefeated at home and also winning 3 road games. Setting benchmarks like that is a dramatic oversimplification of the ebbs and flows of a EuroLeague season, but if the standard for playoff qualification approaches to the historically high near-60% victory rate of last season, these early games between heavy hitters may hold major significance six months from now.
Minding the Gap
Just as the adage "every game matters" means a lot in the EuroLeague these days, so too does the colloquial term "good look."
Synergy tags 11 different play types. Throwing out transition, miscellaneous, and put-back possessions to focus on what teams tend to do in half-court situations, the remaining eight play types can be conveniently split into two groups: on-the-ball, shot-creation situations like pick-and-rolls or post-ups; and off-the-ball situations like cuts or spot-ups. In essence, on-the-ball covers what happens when teams lean on their shot creators to score, while off-the-ball counts mostly assisted "good looks." The graph below compares the efficiency of on- and off-ball actions over the last 14 EuroLeague campaigns.
